Plain Text Editor Help

You can edit articles on LittleWiki in two ways: through the Rich Text Editor or the Plain Text Editor. This article explains how to author wiki text using the plain text editor. When you edit a wiki page, you can use the general wiki markup language. This is a syntax used by most wikis to enter documents in a rich format.

Some of the basics of our wiki markup language are listed below. You can also look at Wikipedia's markup page to see some further documentation -- Shopwiki's syntax is not exactly the same, but it's close. Clicking buttons on the tool bar in the Plain Text Editor will insert the formatting for most of the functions. Below is a brief explanation of the wiki markup language.

Headings

Top level headings (Header 2 or H2) look like this.

• Use ==two equal signs== for a top level heading. These must appear at the very start of a line.

Header 3 (H3) looks like this.

• Use ===three equal signs=== for the H3 level of heading.

Header 4 (H4) looks like this.

• Use ====four equal signs==== for the H4 level of heading.

Dividing Text

Use ---- (four dashes) at the beginning of a line to insert a horizonal rule.A horizontal rule looks like this:

Two new lines in a row indicates the start of a new paragraph.

! Use an exclamation mark at start of line to force a line break but without all the extra vertical line space a true end of paragraph generates.

Formatting Text

• To put text in italics, put two single quotes on either side of it: ''italics''.

• To put text in bold, put three single quotes on either side of it:'''bold'''.

• To put text in italics and bold, put five single quotes on either side of it:'''''italics and bold'''''.

• To generate a bulletted list of items, put an asterisk before each item in the list. For example,

* list item 1
* list item 2
* list item 3

generates a list that looks like this:

• list item 1
• list item 2
• list item 3

• To create a list with multiple levels of indentation, add an asterisk for each level of indentation:

* top level
** second level of indentation
***third level of indentation

• top level
• second level of indentation
• third level of indentation

• To create a numbered list, use number signs:

# numbered
# list
# of
# items

1. numbered
2. list
3. of
4. items

• To center text, place < center > tags around it like so:

Text you want to center.

Text you want to center.

• To indent text, put a colon at the start of the line.

: Indented text

Indented text

• Use the sort tag to sort a list of items. The items are sorted in the presentation but remain in their original order in the edit box.

A sort tag looks like this: < sort >

You may place comments in your wiki text for other editors/authors of wiki comment to read later. These only display on the Edit page. Place these notes inside tags. Tags are these things: < > Whenever you want to end a wiki function, you must give that direction in the wiki language. For example, to end the sort function you would add at the end of the list you want to sort.

Links

You can link one or a few words to specific buying guide on ShopWiki, a ShopWiki search or an outside Web page. When linking to a specific ShopWiki page, use the double brackets to note the page you want to go to. Examples:

[[:Help]] Help

[[User:Jason|Jason's Page]] Jason's Page

Images

Use a tag of the form [[Image:search_string]] to insert a product image into a wiki article. This will automatically embed an appropriate image into the page taken from the shopwiki search engine.
For external images, use [[Image:http://url_to_image]] to insert a graphic from another site.

Unless specified, all images are scaled to a common size for consistency.
Image syntax: [[Image:url,width,srch=search string]] where:

• url = URL to the image. URL must begin with http://
• width = Optional parameter that specifies the size in pixels that the image will be scaled to. If the image is smaller than the specified size, an extra space will be added to the image to fit the requested size. Width values are expressed like 100px (for a 100x100 image). The px must be appended to the size. To use the actual size of the image, use the truesize parameter.
• search string = Optional parameter that specifies the product search to perform when the caption is clicked. If you do not write a caption, there will be no search link.
• caption = Optional parameter that specifies a caption to be displayed below the image.
• noborder: Optional parameter to not show a border around the image.
• right: Optional parameter to align the image to the right of the article.

External Image Examples:

Basic: [[Image:http://image.weather.com/web/common/wxicons/31/34.gif]]

Specific Size: [[Image:http://image.weather.com/web/common/wxicons/31/34.gif,100px]]

Comment Boxes

Comment boxes provide a colored area for comments or other content that is not necessarily part of the core article and should stand out. Comment box markup begins and ends with a double caret (^^). Here's an example of a comment box. The default size of a comment box is about half the width of the screen, but you can specify specific sizes also. Here are some examples.

^^NormalComment Size^^

^^small|Small Box^^

^^large|Wide Box^^

^^xlarge|Extra Wide Box^^

^^full|Full Width Box^^

Tables

Basic table support is possible by using the following wiki tags.

Wiki Markup Table {| params |} Caption |+ caption Row |- params Data Cell |cell1||cell2||cell3 or |cell1 |cell2 |cell3

Sample Table Markup Cell 1, row 1 Cell 2, row 1 Cell 1, row 2 Cell 2, row 2 {| border=1 | Cell 1, row 1 | Cell 2, row 1 |- | Cell 1, row 2 | Cell 2, row 2 |}